It debuted in Firefox just last week, but Mozilla has already updated the out-of-process plug-in protection feature to address problems reported by gamers on older computers.

Mozilla pushed out a minor update to Firefox on Saturday, slightly adjusting the new plug-in crash protection feature that was introduced last week. Firefox 3.6.6 for Windows and Linux delays the amount of time that the plug-in protection module will wait before terminating an unresponsive plug-in.

Mozilla evangelist Mike Beltzner said in a blog post on Saturday that although Firefox 3.6.4 was beta-tested with nearly 1 million users, after its release the company began hearing complaints from some users, especially those playing games on older computers. The crash protection feature would only wait 10 seconds before aborting a plug-in; that's now been extended to 45 seconds.

Firefox for Mac has also been updated to version 3.6.6, but it's not clear why. The out-of-process plug-in crash protection feature has not yet been implemented in the Mac builds of Firefox. Also, some users have reported crashes related to Norton and Skype, and some users who had been using the Firefox 3.6.4 beta builds have reported having to manually install the update the 3.6.6.

Updated Tuesday, June 29, 11:00 a.m.:Users can customize the default timeout settings. In about:config, go to dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs, double-click on the preference, and enter in your preferred timeout in seconds. Thanks to reader Mike Ciance for pointing this out in the comments.